Explaining the rise of moralizing religions: a test of competing hypotheses using the Seshat Databank

Turchin, Peter; Whitehouse, Harvey; Larson, Jennifer; Cioni, Enrico; Reddish, Jenny; Hoyer, Daniel; Savage, Patrick E.; Covey, Alan; Baines, John; Altaweel, Mark; Anderson, Eugene N.; Bol, Peter K.; Brandl, Eva; Carballo, David M.; Feinman, Gary M.; Korotayev, Andrey; Kradin, Nikolay; Levine, Jill; Nugent, Selin E.; Squitieri, Andrea; Wallace, Vesna A.; François, Pieter

doi:10.1080/2153599x.2022.2065345

Cited by 17 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 85 publications

(105 reference statements)

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“…Separately, an influential current in the evolutionary theorizing of religion proposes that belief in all-knowing, morally concerned, punitive deities-"Big Gods"-increased the ability of groups to sustain large-scale social organizations, as well as successfully scale up and expand by facilitating group cohesion and cooperation within a shared ideological framework (36,37). We proxy this hypothesis with the synthetic variable moralizing supernatural punishment (MSP), which aggregates several Seshat variables coding for religious characteristics (38).…”

Section: Predictor Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A variant of the Big Gods theory proposes that "broad supernatural punishment" (including nonagentic forces such as karma) contributed to the rise of sociopolitical complexity (89,93). We proxy this hypothesis with the synthetic variable MSP, which aggregates seven Seshat binary variables coding for religious characteristics (38).…”

Section: Religion Hypotheses (14 and 15)mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Disentangling the evolutionary drivers of social complexity: A comprehensive test of hypotheses

et al. 2022

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During the Holocene, the scale and complexity of human societies increased markedly. Generations of scholars have proposed different theories explaining this expansion, which range from broadly functionalist explanations, focusing on the provision of public goods, to conflict theories, emphasizing the role of class struggle or warfare. To quantitatively test these theories, we develop a general dynamical model based on the theoretical framework of cultural macroevolution. Using this model and Seshat: Global History Databank, we test 17 potential predictor variables proxying mechanisms suggested by major theories of sociopolitical complexity (and >100,000 combinations of these predictors). The best-supported model indicates a strong causal role played by a combination of increasing agricultural productivity and invention/adoption of military technologies (most notably, iron weapons and cavalry in the first millennium BCE).

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Section: Predictor Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Religion Hypotheses (14 and 15)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Disentangling the evolutionary drivers of social complexity: A comprehensive test of hypotheses

et al. 2022

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“…On the contrary, if concepts of supernatural moralizing punishment and reward are adopted and 'enforced by those in power,' we might reasonably expect some effect on the behavior of subordinate individuals regardless of their private beliefs. In our current model (Turchin et al 2022), we attempt to take account of the degree to which concepts of moralizing supernatural punishment and reward (MSP) have penetrated beyond the rulers and elites, by coding whatever evidence exists for the beliefs of commoners. Then too, the fact that MSP is attested in a given culture is, from a comparative perspective, not insignificant.…”

Section: Attested Msp and Its Relationship To Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…After correcting the error, our conclusion that Big Gods did not drive the rise of big societies throughout world history remains unchanged. The corrected version of the paper (Whitehouse et al 2022) and a target article building on our initial investigations of moralizing supernatural punishment and reward (MSP) (Turchin et al 2022), have been published in Religion, Brain and Behavior.The three responses here are equally relevant to our corrected version.…”

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confidence: 99%

Moralizing Supernatural Punishment and Reward: A Response to Critics

Larson¹,

Whitehouse²,

François³

et al. 2022

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In this contribution we respond to three critiques of our 2019 article ‘Complex Societies Precede Moralizing Gods throughout World History.’ We clarify that our research does not, as our critics suppose, support the claim that moralizing gods played a decisive role in the development of complex societies. Indeed our goal was to test this claim and we found it wanting. Our methods ‘reduce’ neither religion or social complexity in the ways claimed, while our tentative conclusions about the relationship between frequent, routinized ritual and social cohesion are supported by much research beyond the paper under discussion. In the Roman Empire, many forms of collective ritual contributed to the propagation of Romanitas. We have never claimed that this depended on absolute uniformity of belief. Other misconceptions about our supposedly ‘inattentive’ qualitative analysis result from misreadings of information in our open-access database, which functions as an evolving set of information relevant to specific research questions rather than a general encyclopedia. Despite these disagreements, we continue to maintain that neither qualitative historical methods nor quantitative analytic approaches alone can produce satisfying answers to causal questions about world history. The best approach, we argue, is to integrate the insights from humanities with ‘Big Data’ analyses from social science, and we welcome continued engagement and collaboration across traditional disciplinary boundaries.

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“…These resources allow scientists to quantitatively test cross-cultural hypotheses using global data. The 21st century has seen a resurgence of interest in such global databases, stimulating new research and debate on the nature of cross-cultural diversity and cultural evolution [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. Alan Lomax and Conrad Arensberg's Expressive Style Research Project at Columbia University, which also began in the mid-20th century, complemented resources like the Ethnographic Atlas for the domain of the performing arts by integrating its cross-cultural classification design into the research design of "Cantometrics" ("canto" = song, "metrics" = measure).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Global Jukebox: A public database of performing arts and culture

et al. 2022

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Standardized cross-cultural databases of the arts are critical to a balanced scientific understanding of the performing arts, and their role in other domains of human society. This paper introduces the Global Jukebox as a resource for comparative and cross-cultural study of the performing arts and culture. The Global Jukebox adds an extensive and detailed global database of the performing arts that enlarges our understanding of human cultural diversity. Initially prototyped by Alan Lomax in the 1980s, its core is the Cantometrics dataset, encompassing standardized codings on 37 aspects of musical style for 5,776 traditional songs from 1,026 societies. The Cantometrics dataset has been cleaned and checked for reliability and accuracy, and includes a full coding guide with audio training examples (https://theglobaljukebox.org/?songsofearth). Also being released are seven additional datasets coding and describing instrumentation, conversation, popular music, vowel and consonant placement, breath management, social factors, and societies. For the first time, all digitized Global Jukebox data are being made available in open-access, downloadable format (https://github.com/theglobaljukebox), linked with streaming audio recordings (theglobaljukebox.org) to the maximum extent allowed while respecting copyright and the wishes of culture-bearers. The data are cross-indexed with the Database of Peoples, Languages, and Cultures (D-PLACE) to allow researchers to test hypotheses about worldwide coevolution of aesthetic patterns and traditions. As an example, we analyze the global relationship between song style and societal complexity, showing that they are robustly related, in contrast to previous critiques claiming that these proposed relationships were an artifact of autocorrelation (though causal mechanisms remain unresolved).

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Explaining the rise of moralizing religions: a test of competing hypotheses using the Seshat Databank

Cited by 17 publications

References 85 publications

Disentangling the evolutionary drivers of social complexity: A comprehensive test of hypotheses

Disentangling the evolutionary drivers of social complexity: A comprehensive test of hypotheses

Moralizing Supernatural Punishment and Reward: A Response to Critics

The Global Jukebox: A public database of performing arts and culture

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